Shabtai Shavit
Shabtai ShavitFlash 90

Former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit, who will be celebrating his 80th birthday, is working to remove Binyamin Netanyahu from the prime minister's office while abandoning restraint in his characterization of the national camp and the people of Judea and Samaria.

"In the early 1990s, I met with Arab leaders in the Middle East and visited some countries," Shavit says in an interview with Maariv Weekend. "We've always known how to exploit political situations where there were meetings of interests between us and a given Arab state, but no clandestine contacts system would be the same as a signed peace agreement, diplomatic relations, and trade agreements.

"So what can be done with Jordan and Egypt, we cannot do with the Palestinians?" he asks, without noting that the latter claim the State as their property.

He claims many Judea and Samaria residents would agree to leave under appropriate conditions. "There's no doubt that Judea and Samaria has strength in faith, even messianic strength, for which settling Judea and Samaria is G-d's command. I disrespect them, because this isn't true Judaism."

Shavit finds it difficult to suffer the presence of Betzalel Smotrich in the public and political arena. "Are you willing to live in the State of Israel that he describes? In Smotrich's Land of Israel I won't stay a minute," he said.

"My war is not with Smotrich," he adds, "but with the Likud headed by Netanyahu. His voters are people without knowledge, without understanding. His political base is people whose normative threshold is grass-high."